


The Doctor's Familiar

by ameonna (zetsubonna), melospiza



Series: Rook's Gambit [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, M/M, Post-Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-11
Updated: 2017-08-11
Packaged: 2018-12-14 03:09:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11774259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zetsubonna/pseuds/ameonna, https://archiveofourown.org/users/melospiza/pseuds/melospiza
Summary: In the aftermath of Sherlock's death, John could really use a new companion.





	The Doctor's Familiar

Sherlock Holmes was dead.

James Moriarty was dead.

John Watson was alive, if one could call how he currently spent his days “living.”

Luckily, or not, he had his work. Being the apprentice healer of St. Mungo’s James Mouat Ward was exhaustive. Untangling curses and repairing the damage dark magic was wreaking all over the United Kingdom didn't leave time for friends, or romance It didn’t leave time for much of anything eally, except the work. He would come back to his little flat too tired to read, too tired to eat, and decidedly too tired to think, to feel, to hurt. He slept, as he had been accused since school, the sleep of the righteous.

Harry Watson had her own problems, and right now John was not one of them. He could not fault her for it. He would feel put out by her, too, so after Sherlock’s death they refused to speak on any topic of substance, or at all, for more than thirty seconds. Clara owled sometimes, to say hello, to keep him apprised of the weather in Castle Combe, and to indirectly inform him that his sister was still among the living.

His school friend Gregory Lestrade, these days a licensed Legilimens and Auror for the Ministry of Magic, tried to convince him to come out to the pub, to have a pint, to go to a wizard tavern, to meet someone, to date. John wasn't interested in anything anymore. He usually managed to be busy. Even if he wasn’t working round-the-clock shifts at the hospital, there were case studies for him to examine at home. Sometimes he just stayed at the hospital overnight when his flat seemed too quiet, or too empty.

Sally Donovan cooked him dinner once a week, to make sure he ate, and worked out at the gym with him. Their bickering had tapered off as they'd gotten older. He's never had a more comfortable set of silences with a person than the ones he had with her.

It was Anderson who suggested, at long last, that John might consider getting a familiar. He considered a cat. Cats would shed. Cat fur might contaminate his clothing and make it unsuitable for the hospital. A cat was out. The thought of a toad or salamander never crossed his mind. After all those holidays chasing dragons with his father around the Hebrides, John preferred his amphibious creatures be both oversized and intelligent. A bird, then. But not an owl. He lived in a part of London densely packed with Muggles, and having an owl lurking around the flat would be too conspicuous. Pigeons were common enough, though, and sparrows were small. He had only to go to Diagon Alley and pick something out.

He forgot. About the bird, about the idea of a familiar. First came a whole family of victims of Unforgivable Curses, and no one broke them with more care for the victims than John. And then there was the girl whose wand exploded so hard it stabbed her, and she began speaking in falling gold coins, which reminded John of a story he'd read once as a child. When the patients cursed by strange accidents began to outnumber those afflicted by dark magic, it seemed like John could draw breath again. But still there was a pain when he inhaled, a stitch in his side that wouldn’t abate.

He was home for once, sitting near the window with the paper spread out before him, listening to the intermittent dripping of water from the eaves outside and doing his level best to ignore the emptiness on the opposite side of the table. One never knew when some mysterious ailment might pop up in an item at the back of the paper. Sherlock had looked for cases in the paper. John folded it up and pushed it aside with a sigh.

There came a tapping at the window. Owls had come all the time for Sherlock, missives sent by witches and wizards begging for a taste of his unusual expertise, but the number of owl posts had tapered off after the news of what happened had spread. Even then, the owls had usually known enough to drop the mail in the postbox across the street and only came to the window when the box was full, so the tapping was unusual. And persistent. When John turned to look, he saw that there was a rook on the windowsill, a sleek black dark-eyed bird, tapping with its grayish beak upon the window pane. As John straightened, watching it, it fluttered away, then immediately flew back and tapped again.

"What the devil?" John mumbled, to no one, to his empty flat. And then, because his father had been a naturalist and a cryptozoologist and John missed him terribly now that he had passed, he watched the rook tap the glass again, keenly. When a small, unbidden smile came to his lips, John found himself unlatching the window and drawing it open.

"Well. What's this, then?"

The rook entered the flat with a loud flapping of wings and an abrasive croaking, deeper than the caw of a crow, almost seeming to scold him for leaving it to sit on the windowsill for so long. It lit upon the arm of the sofa, then the music stand adjacent to the window, then the back of the armchair facing the door before finally settling upon the skull on the mantle like an image from a gothic Muggle poem.

"That's Sherlock's skull," John informed the rook immediately, grabbing the edge of the table for balance as he rose to his feet. "You can't sit there."

The rook tilted its head to examine John with one large dark eye.

John stared back at the bird for a few moments, and then settled in the nearby armchair with a sigh, his hand resting heavy across his eyes.

"Or you can. Just don't shit on it, please. I'm fond of it."

The bird was the first guest he'd had in the flat in the past two years that wasn't Sally. Lestrade never came over. Molly had never been invited. John realized suddenly that he was a terrible friend and that he’d been too stubborn to care.

"Leaving the window open," he advised the bird. "Might take a nap. I’m tired, you see. It’s been a long day."

The rook hopped down from the skull with a faint scrabbling of talons and began to walk gingerly across the mantelpiece, tilting its head this way and that, hopping upon or over the irregular assemblage of items that had been left there. Most of the things were Sherlock's, odds and ends such as the skull and a shadowbox of a preserved bat, that John hadn't the heart to get rid of. Everything was still in place, just as it had been the day they had left together, and just as it had been the day John had returned alone. Abruptly the rook flew up from the mantel, suddenly wheeled about in midair, and began attacking its reflection in the mirror over the fireplace. It beat its heavy wings against the glass and cried out defiantly, kicking and tearing with its feet, upsetting the shadowbox and knocking it onto the floor.

"Stop!" John yelled, and hit the rug on his knees without thinking, scrambling to make sure the box was all right. His knee almost never hurt anymore, but he usually managed not to drop his full weight on it. It hurt. He didn't attack the bird, though. He didn't try to stop it from breaking the mirror. The mirror didn't matter, it was just a mirror. The shadowbox. Sherlock's bat. John cradled it to his chest and slipped his wand from his sleeve, touching it to the crack.

"Reparo."

He stroked the glass case, set it on the floor. He pushed his fingers into his temples.

"God. I should move. I should really move out. I can't- I just can't..." John pulled his legs up and wrapped his arms around his knees. He watched the bird from the floor.

"Go on then. Smash it. Smash everything. Why not? It hardly matters."

The bird was the size of a smallish cat, and so it was rather alarming when it flew straight at John's head, its pink mouth opened in a loud croak, and then flew back at the mirror. It croaked and kicked and flailed and beat at the mirror with its wings, fluttering from one side to the other, scratching at the edges with its talons.

"Fine, you bloody terror!" John snarled, pushing himself up, wincing. He really shouldn't have dropped down like that, he'd have to charm his knee later or it might act up on his rounds. He grabbed the mirror, which was rather heavy, and smashed it in the fireplace with a poker, his face flushing as he stared irritably at the rook.

"Seven years on me. Now, you saucy bird, what do you want?

The rook puffed up, tilting its head to eye him again. Then it resumed pacing across the mantelpiece before hopping down to the edge of the bookshelf. It strolled right past John's collection of books and seemed to examine Sherlock's, occasionally tapping its beak against the spine of individual volumes. Suddenly it flew up with another noisy croak and began to attack one of the books, grabbing the edge of the spine and beating its wings powerfully as it tried to drag the book from the shelf.

John stared. Clearly, the bird had a goal in mind. It was being very, very specific. He'd thought it some mere random, wild creature but it was behaving intelligently, with selection, with discernment- Like a familiar.

"Did Andy send you?" John asked, his brows furrowed curiously. "We'd talked about this. I mean- you know, of course you know. If you're- how very rare. It’s not that common for Andy to do something right."

He took the book, and threw it carelessly on top of the mirror shards in the fireplace.

"This feels a bit blasphemous. Incendio."

The book burned.

The bird fluffed up again, puffing out its feathers so it looked twice its normal size, gave itself a good shake, and then smoothed out again. It gave John another long look, then began to walk across the floor in a stately manner, quite unlike the droves of pigeons waddling about on the streets outside. It seemed somehow rather lordly. It also seemed, with the little bobs and darts of its dark head, to be looking for something. The rook flew up suddenly and began to tear at something stuck on the wall beside the window, just at the edge of Sherlock's cluttered side of the desk. The kicking and beating sent a sheaf of papers spilling to the floor, but John had no time to admonish the bird again as his attention was suddenly grabbed by a thin screech rising up from whatever the bird was tearing at. It was a postage stamp, stuck to the wall. No... it was a portrait the size of a postage stamp. John glimpsed the wizard within fleeing past the edge of the tiny canvas as the rook ripped the thing in half.

The flat, John realized, was under surveillance. He had always imagined it might be, but by Mycroft, Sherlock's brother, who was sort of mad in that way and meant well. But the rook's purposeful destruction of the devices means they were planted by someone malicious, someone who meant to hurt John. That meant Moriarty. Or one of his contemporaries. John didn't have any other enemies. But Moriarty was dead. John had witnessed it, and it was an event that would haunt him until the end of time.

Moriarty being dead did not explain the surveillance. He must have had contacts. Likely Death Eaters and spies and dark wizards, all of whom would be watching John because John had been Sherlock Holmes's lover, and if Sherlock had given him any clues they might need-

John cracked his shoulders. The game was on. He'd missed it. Sherlock was running ahead, somewhere in the great beyond, and John would follow, but, for now, someone had to finish the work. He leaned over Sherlock’s empty chair to scrape the last bits of the hidden portrait from the wall with his blunt fingernails, being careful not to damage the wallpaper, murmuring all the while.

"You need a name," John informed the rook. He smiled and scrubbed his fingers through his short hair. He couldn't remember the last time he'd smiled. The rook too seemed pleased with their progress, hunkering down in Sherlock’s seat, chattering softly.

"A carrion bird familiar for a surgeon? Bit morbid of Andy, really, but if I can't help my patients, they'll need your services. ...You know, you remind me of my old Potions master. Mean bastard. Terrible instructor. Genius, though, like Sherlock in a way, God rest them both. I'd have done anything to please him, and he treated me like an incompetent dolt." John raised his eyebrow. "Also like Sherlock, actually. What do you think of Severus for a name?

The chattering stopped at the mention of Anderson, the bird’s head tilting to the side. And at the suggestion of a name, the bird dropped its head and hunched its shoulders in a threatening gesture, opening its pink mouth in a soft hiss.

"No, then," John said, raising his hands in a placating gesture. "Right. Fine." He continued to talk as he straightened, shuffling on stocking feet toward the kitchen.

"I'll make it up to you. Come on then. I'll give you a biscuit."

The kitchen was boring, without Sherlock. John never put fingers in the butter dish or toes in the sugar bowl or eyes in the pantry. There were no severed heads in the icebox, no vials of poison mixed in with the condiments. It was clean as a surgery and stocked with food.

"You won't like Edgar, either, you're not actually a raven. No chess analogies, I think, too punny. I really am partial to an Ess, though. Something sibilant." He motioned to the counter. "Up here, please."

The rook hopped after him into the kitchen, and fluttered up onto the counter as it was bidden, watching John keenly all the while. John took a battered metal tin out of the pantry, one of the sort that had once held Christmas cookies and now got used for everything, before prying the lid off with his fingers and drawing a biscuit from beneath the crinkling wax paper inside. They were gingerbread, which was Sherlock's favorite and thus John's specialty. He'd made them just days before because he’d been bored and lonesome and had felt like having a good cry. They were still soft.

He offered the biscuit to the rook, the head of the gingerbread man first.

"Sherlock always ate the heads first," he muttered. "Dismembered them. Fucking cute." John shrugged. "Suffolk? I do wear entirely too much wool."

The rook tore the head from the gingerbread man with a savage rip of its beak, then dropped the pieces and grasped them in one clawed foot as it pecked them apart. It ate with relish, readily accepting more pieces of biscuit and not showing any adverse reaction to John's suggestion of a name.

"Just one, I think," John murmured. "Entirely too much sugar in gingerbread, don't want to make you sick."

When the bird had eaten the whole biscuit, John reached out, tentative, to stroke its glossy head with the tip of his finger.

"Suffolk you are, then. Handsome fellow. Pleased to meet you."

The bird stood quite still as John touched it. The feathers on the rook's head were surprisingly soft, and as John stroked the smooth, dark crown, the rook closed its eyes. After a few moments of this, Suffolk, as he deigned to be called, settled in for a bout of intense grooming, preening his chest and picking crumbs from his feet, scratching his head and preening his wings and back. It was nice to have a living creature in the house, something to talk to. Another warm body helped fill the achingly empty space, even if that body was a small one.

Throughout the remainder of the evening, Suffolk led John to two more spying devices; one on the stair just outside the flat, and one on the doorway leading to the street. Then he perched on the back of Sherlock's chair, tucking one leg against his breast and looking pleased with himself. John wasn't sure what to think of this at first, but as he settled in with a book he found it oddly comforting to address comments toward Sherlock's chair. Intermittently Suffolk would flutter out the window, but he always returned before John could worry, and when John was ready to turn in, Suffolk followed him.

The bird perched on the back of a chair in the spare bedroom, watching as John turned down the bedclothes, having taken to the second bedroom when he could not endure sleeping in the first.

"Good night, Suffolk," said John. The rook whistled at him.

That night, John dreamed of a weight on the corner of the bed and a gentle hand stroking his hair.


End file.
